Swarm

-5-

“Retrieval process complete.”

“You—you are ready for new instructions?” I asked hesitantly.

“Ready,” said the ship.

I looked around with wide eyes. That voice never seemed to emanate from any one spot. I’d never seen a speaker. The sound came from the very walls of the ship itself, I thought. If the ship could change its walls into doors at will, then maybe it could make tiny motions in a spot on the walls, forming a vibration. Forming a speaker and pronouncing words. Very strange technology.

I reflected that if I was allowed to give the ship a new order, then this test was either much longer and more complex than any of the others, or it was not a test at all. Perhaps, I had truly been given command of this ship. But why?

I decided, at long last, to ask some questions. There was one I had to ask.

“I command you to answer my questions. How are the revivals going? Are my children going to survive?”

“Unknown. The injections have been administered.”

I thought about that. What injections? I decided the ship’s answer was good enough for now. I would find out the rest when the job was done. The fact the ship had said unknown concerned me, however. The outcome was in doubt. I shook my head and rubbed my temples.

“Ship—what should I call you?”

“How do you wish to address us?”

I thought of a dozen expletives. Asshole came to mind, for example. For the first time since I’d awakened, a grim smile twitched on my face and quickly died.

“I’m going to name you Alamo,” I said, “because I intend to never forget you.”

“Rename complete.”

I snorted. “Okay Alamo, let’s try something easy. Turn on a view screen or something so I can see what’s going on below us.”

A portal melted in the middle of the bridge floor. It was circular and perhaps ten feet in diameter. The second it began to open, the air in the room began screaming out of it. A fantastic wave of cold struck me. Could we be in space? Had I just killed myself?

“Close it! Close it up again!” My breath came in gasps. I was on the floor and being sucked across it toward the opening.

The hole vanished and the room rapidly repressurized. How high up were we? I didn’t think I was in open space, as I was sure we would not have survived that. Besides, I wasn’t weightless. Very high up, but still inside the atmosphere, then. Maybe miles up.

I found myself in a shivering ball on the floor of the ship. That had been a close one. I recalled my words: Turn on a view screen or something.... I was certain it was that or something part which had gotten me into trouble. One did not want to be vague with this vessel. Another hard lesson learned.

“Ship?” I said.

Nothing. Then I remembered the rename.

“Alamo, respond.”

“Responding.”

“Why did you open that portal in the floor?”

“Because the commander ordered it.”

I blinked and sat up against a wall. So, I was the ship’s commander. Had those centaurs been the old commanders?

“Alamo, return to California. Maintain an altitude of one mile.”

The ship shuddered to a stop.

“Secondary mission aborted.”

“What secondary mission?”

“The acquisition of new command personnel.”

“Have you been gathering people up all along in this ship while I’ve been sitting in here?”

“Yes.”

I huffed. “Have you been testing them, the way you tested me?”

“No. The testing sequence was not identical.”

I thought about that. I believed I had the answer. “So, now that I’m sitting in here, the aggression test or the leadership test would be the last one, right? The one you gave them when they reached the bridge? You would have given command of this ship to whoever won a fight to the death in this room?”

“Yes.”

“Stop that mission. Alamo, you will not continue to pick people up and test them. That mission has ended.”

“Schedule updated.”

I was more certain than ever that I was dealing with an artificial intelligence. Maybe there weren’t any aliens aboard for me to avenge myself on, only the ship itself, following some commands given to it long ago. I just hoped the ‘acquisition of command personnel’ mission didn’t pop back up again, like a program that kept reinstalling itself and trying to update itself no matter how many times you canceled it.

I had a horrible new thought then. “Alamo, do not drop out anyone else who is aboard. Leave them on this ship. I wish to talk to them.”

“All acquisition mission participants were released when the mission was aborted.”

My hands went to my face, rubbing. They crept up to my hair, where they tugged. I pulled my own hair until it hurt and I made a roaring sound.

“Released,” I said, my voice choking. “You mean you dropped them out of the ship?”

“Yes.”

I had just killed an unknown number of people. I thought about asking how many there were—who they were. But I stopped myself. It would not do my sanity any good to know the details.

When the ship shuddered again, my mind had partly recovered from the guilt of having made deadly mistakes. Command definitely came with the weight of responsibility on this ship. Since the Alamo had stopped, I figured we must be back over California. I wondered if the ship had plucked up Dave Mitters from his squad car and put him through few tests before I had him dropped into the upper atmosphere. He had stopped firing in a sudden fashion, and there had been no shouting afterward. Perhaps it had burnt him down with that green beam instead. One way or another, I felt sure the ship had killed him.

I tried to put all of that out of my mind. If I just talked to the ship and didn’t give it any new commands, I figured it probably wouldn’t kill anyone. If nothing else, I could stop it from causing more grief. At least, I hoped so.

“Alamo,” I said, trying to think clearly, to reason out the right approach. “Where is the ship’s crew? What were they trying to accomplish?”

“Excessive responses generated.”

I thought about that. I had to be more specific. “Besides myself and my children, are there any other humans currently onboard?”

“No.”

“Besides the four humans, are there other living beings onboard?”

The voice hesitated for several seconds. I’d never heard it do that before. “Answer unclear.”

Answer unclear? For some reason, the response caused a chill to go through me. What might cause it to be unsure? My mind jumped to strange conclusions. Were there some kind of zombie creatures aboard, or frozen beings, or robots that might be considered alive? Suddenly, I thought I had it.

“Alamo, you are aboard this vessel, do you consider yourself to be alive?”

“Unclear.”

I nodded to myself. I might have smiled, but I was in a grim mood, so my mouth formed a tight line instead. I had learned something. The ship was indeed artificially intelligent. Was a thing like that alive? Not in my book, but who knew how it thought about itself. I decided not to get into a pointless philosophical argument with the ship over this issue. I would skip administering the Turing Test. It really didn’t matter.

“Alamo, is this portion of the ship the bridge?”

Another hesitation. Were a vast number of recursive routines firing off in this thing’s mind causing the delay?

“This is the goal room for the command mission. It has capabilities the other chambers don’t have.”

I nodded. That made it the bridge. “Can I fly the ship from this room?”

“Yes.”

“Can I...” I tried to think of some other command function. “Can I communicate with other ships from this room?”

“Yes.”

I sucked in a breath. For the very first time, it occurred to me that there might be other ships like this one. Were they all over the Earth? It made my stomach flutter, as if I’d dropped off the high dive.

“How many ships like this one are there, Alamo?” I asked quietly.

“Unknown.”

Precision, I told myself. I had to ask for specifics. “How many ships like this one are within—ten miles of the Earth’s surface?”

“Seven hundred and forty-six.”

I put my hand over my mouth. This was an invasion. Up until now, I’d believed myself to be special, to be one of those people they put on TV who said they’d been abducted and probed by aliens. I had to take all those people out of the crazy zone in my mind now. They had been telling the truth all along.

“Are they all searching for command personnel, the way you were?”

“No.”

“How many have found command personnel and aborted the searching mission, as this ship has?”

“Forty-one.”

So, the majority of them were still on the hunt. How many people had been killed by these ships—were being killed—even as I talked calmly to the Alamo? I couldn’t believe the world’s armed forces would take this invasion lightly. Were jets coming to engage me now, and possibly blow me out of the sky?

“Alamo, are there—planes attacking these ships?”

“Unknown.”

“You aren’t communicating with them?”

“Ships with command personnel are communicating. Other ships are seeking command personnel.”

My mind raced. Some of the ships had given the humans the tests. Some people had survived and were in command, the way I was. I wasn’t alone.

“Can I communicate with—” I began, then just gave the order. “Alamo, put me in communication with the other ships. I want to broadcast to them.”

“Channel open.”

I cleared my throat. “Hello? Hello out there? Can anyone hear me?”

There was silence for several seconds, then a gruff voice spoke up. The voice had an accent that sounded British, or maybe Australian. “Who’s there, then? Get off the public channel, this is reserved.”

The voice seemed to come from the walls, from all of them at once, just as the voice of the ship did. I looked around me, almost expecting to see a face appear. I thought about telling the ship to show me a face, but decided against it. The last time I’d requested such a thing I’d nearly been killed.

“I don’t understand what you mean, about the public channel. I’ve only just made it to the bridge of my ship and I don’t have a clue about what’s going on. Is this some kind of military thing?”

“Have you named your ship yet? If not, do so. Then open a private channel to the Snapper. Now, shut up and get off the public channel. Snapper out.”

I took a deep breath and told my ship to open a connection between the Alamo and the Snapper.

The gruff, accented voice came back on. “Ship name?”

“The Alamo,” I said.

Laughter. “Good one. You are a Yank, I take it? Congratulations on surviving your first hours aboard a murder-machine. Now, listen carefully greenie. There are some things you have to do right away. Tell your ship to stop picking up people and killing them, that’s number one. If it picks up a winner, it will guide them to you and they will kill you. Or you will have to kill them. Either way, it won’t be pleasant.”

“I’ve already done that.”

“Really? Good. I had to kill two poor Indian bastards who made it to me before I figured it out. They were trying to do the leadership test. I knew one of us had to drop out. It wasn’t fair, really, since I’d already passed the test once. Poor wallies. I still think of the looks on their faces as I watched them tumble down over Bangalore.”

We exchanged names. My sole contact with humanity was an Aussie who called himself Captain Jack Crow. He’d spent a lot of time in the states, but still had an identifiable accent. I briefly told him my story—about my kids and the deadly tests. He made sympathetic noises. I figured he’d heard it all before. After a minimum of pleasantries we got down to the business of survival.

“Kyle Riggs,” said Crow. “Right, I wrote that down.”

“Where did you get the pen and paper?”

“I foraged for it. You’ll learn to do the same.”

“What do you mean?”

“Start stealing things. You’ll need them. There isn’t a whole lot aboard these ships. No food. No electronics that we can figure out. No toilets, either. Not even a bed. But you can tell the ship to fly to your local shops and steal what you need. If you tell it to, it can make a power outlet you can plug things into. You’ll need that.”

“Won’t stealing items upset the populace?”

The gruff laughter again. There was something harsh in that laughter, something that made me think I might or might not like this man if I ever met him in person. He didn’t sound kind or easy-going. But he sounded capable. What kind of person would typically make it through such deadly tests, I wondered. Probably not the nicest guy in the world.

“It does upset people, but they can’t really do anything about it.”

“What about jets? Won’t these ships come under attack?”

“They do, off and on. But I think the ships shoot down anything that comes close.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know, like fighters, missiles, police helicopters. Anything that gets too close is taken out automatically.”

“I fired a gun at the ship when it took my kids. It didn’t do anything.”

“Then you were lucky. They seem to become more paranoid when they have us—‘command personnel’ aboard. I think they know they can’t be hurt by a bullet or a fist or a thrown rock. When they are roaming around killing people they seem to only shoot at incoming missiles and the like. But once they have a pilot, they get more protective and react to anything that could hurt you.”

“I did see a flash of light when I was over my house, but that’s all so far.”

“You probably won’t see it fire at aircraft. The officials have gotten smarter over the last few hours and they stay clear of our ships. When the invasion started it came in last night over Eastern Asia first and then swept toward Europe and Africa. The ships raided their way around the globe, heading west with the darkness of night. You Yanks are the last ones to join the party. By now, the military has figured out a few things.”

“How come I didn’t hear anything about last night’s invasion?”

“Did you watch the news last night?”

“No,” I said, thinking about my popcorn and movie night with the kids. It was a painful memory. I wondered if there would ever be another. I thought then about cutting this talk short and going into Medical to check on the kids. What were the robot arms doing to them? Did I really want to know? Did I really want to see it? I supposed I had to trust them. The kids were already dead. Those arms were the last slim hope I had.

“The news people have been talking about UFO sightings all day,” Crow said, “but as the night wore on and they got to the States, as best we can tell, the numbers grew. It was just a few ships at first over Asia. Now there are hundreds.”

“Seven hundred and forty-six, according to the Alamo.”

“That many? Well, we can’t do much about most of them. We can only communicate with people who finished the tests.”

“Why do these ships need us to tell them what to do? Did their old commanders all die or something?”

“No one knows. Personally, I think the goat-people most of us found on the ships were the old command personnel. Maybe they failed and we are the replacements. Doesn’t matter. What you need to do is set up the ship so you can see outside. Just a few webcams and some computers will do it. It’s not the best video, but it works.”

I shook my head, baffled. “If these are robot ships, why don’t they have equipment like that built in?”

“Nobody’s figured that out yet, either. Listen, are you with the military?”

“I was in the Army Reserve.”

“Reserves? An officer?” he asked quickly.

“Yeah, First Lieutenant. It was a way to pay for graduate school.”

“Did you see any action?”

“One tour in the Gulf… but that was a long time ago. I’m a college professor now.”

“A professor?” snorted Crow. “That’s a first. What do you teach, martial arts?”

“No, computer science.”

He made an appreciative, grunting noise. “Unusual, but I’m sure you will be useful. Most of the survivors are military, or crazy guys who sleep with guns under their pillows. You’re the first teacher I’ve heard of making it through the tests.”

“I own a farm,” I explained. “And I had a shotgun handy when they came.”

“Ah, good, I see,” Crow said.

I could tell that just being a farmer moved me up in his estimation. I thought about the type of person who was likely to survive the tests I’d been given. Logically, they would be physically tough, quick-minded, decisive people who were probably somewhat paranoid. That didn’t describe my colleagues at the University, I had to admit.

“Listen, Jack,” I said, “have any of us contacted our governments yet? Why don’t we fly these ships to our capitols and set them down and hand them over to the authorities?”

Crow snorted. “Rude, since the ships would shoot up anyone who threatened us. But it just doesn’t work that way, in any case. These ships chose us. They won’t let us do whatever we want.”

“So far, the ship has done everything I’ve asked.”

“Try landing and getting out. It won’t let you. Not unless you do some very nasty things to yourself—and maybe not even then. It won’t let other people around you either, now that you have established full control.”

“I opened up the floor by accident and could have killed myself.”

“It might have looked that way, but the ship wouldn’t have let you fall out.”

“You mean we are prisoners?”

“We can do what we want. But we have to stay in our ships. We are on our own, and setting up our own organization. That brings us to my next question.”

“What?”

“Will you, Kyle Riggs, join me—join us? I have over thirty ships in my fleet. I’m an ex-naval captain and I know what I’m doing to some extent. We need you, and I’ll give you the rank of Ensign to start with.”

I stopped talking for a moment, stunned. What was this man talking about? Was he forming some kind of political force outside his own government?

“What gives you the authority to do any of that?”

“These ships give us the authority. Nothing on Earth can stand up against them. We are the only ones who control them. To let someone else take control of them, we have to die. I’m not interested committing suicide for the benefit of any government. So, what do you say?”

“But why? Why are these ships here and what are they doing?”

Crow paused. “You don’t know yet?”

“I’m clueless.”

Another harsh laugh from my only contact with the world. I didn’t like his laugh; it was the laugh of the bully who tripped the skinny kid.

“You’ve got a lot more to learn, Kyle. And none of it is good.”